STEP 4: Create Your Goals

Click here to watch a video of this process.

1. Click on Goals in the left sidebar

2. If you don’t have a $1000 emergency fund, click on the Emergency Fund icon to add it.

3. Next, click on any debts you’re working to pay off. 

   1. Make sure to set the quantity of each goal type to the number of that type of goals you want to create.

      1. For example, if you have three credit cards you’re paying off, after you click on Credit Cards, use the + button to increase the number of Credit Card goals to three.

4. Click on Next at the bottom, then use the pencil icon to name each of your goals.

   1. For goals like vacations, be specific in your name with regards to when the goal deadline is (maybe it’s a summer 2025 vacation, so your goal name may be Cruise Summer 2025).

   2. For goals like credit cards, include the interest rate in your goal name. For example, if it’s a 24% interest rate card, the name may be Discover Card 24%. 

5. You can drag and drop them to change the order of priority for those goals.

6. Click on Next and set the goal amount for all of your savings. For your debts, you will not set a goal - the amount will be dictated by the balance on whichever account you connect.

7. Click on Next and link your accounts 

   1. For your Emergency Fund, link the goal to your savings or checking account (wherever you are keeping it right now) and designate a specific starting portion that you want to apply.

   2. With all savings goals, you can choose how much of the savings account balance should apply to the goal. For example, if you have $10,000 in your family savings account, but only $200 of it is set aside for your vacation, when you link the account you will turn off the setting where it applies the full account balance, and you will type in $200 as the starting balance towards your goal.

   3. For your debts, link them directly to your credit cards and loans.

8. Click on Next and set a monthly budget for how much you want to apply to each goal - you can change this later!

9. When you are logging transactions for your goals, you will look for the transactions that are associated with the account linked to the goal. When you open the transaction, under the category you will see a dropdown for goals. Any goals linked to the account on that transaction will appear and you can select one.

   1. If you have multiple transactions related to your goal, it is likely that only one should apply to your budget.

      1. For example, your mortgage may be a $1000 expense from your checking account and a $1000 credit to your mortgage account.

      2. The transaction for the mortgage account is the one that will apply to your budget - choose the category Mortgage and select the Mortgage goal. It will appear in the Goals group on your budget. 

      3. The transaction for the checking account is the one we do not want to apply to our budget, so you will set the category for that transaction to Transfer.

10. If you ever need to update your goal after it is initially created, check out this video to see how you can do that!

11. Once your goals are in place, you will want to start managing your transactions for those goals. You can see a video of how to do that here!

    1. The main thing to remember is that you want to use the “destination” account’s transaction to apply to your Goal. 

    2. If both accounts related to your transaction are in Monarch, you will see two transactions related to that transfer/ payment. One transaction for when it came out of an account (often your checking account), and one transaction for when it was applied to another account (typically savings, a loan, or a card).

    3. The default Monarch categories of Transfer and Credit Card Payment, will not be applied to your budget. You can use those for the transactions related to the account the funds were moved from.

    4. You can also use those categories for the transaction related to the account the funds landed in, but you need to attach them to the relevant Goal in order for that transaction amount to be included in your budget.

    5. Remember, you can watch this video here to see how this works!